Monday, April 26, 2010

Samsung Galaxy Spica i5700

I currently have a Nokia E63. Had endless trouble with it initially - it would hang frequently when answering a call. After a firmware update, things are a lot smoother and I've begun to like the phone. Push mail via Good messaging works pretty neat. Google Maps is excellent - though I wish I had splurged and bought an E71 for the GPS. Phone is pretty decent for the price - I bought it for about 12.5K Rs and it's now dropped to around 9K Rs. For the price, it's definitely value for money. The keyboard is pretty usable and it's definitely a decent business phone. All that said, I do have a long list of complaints for the phone
  • Phone becomes very slow sometimes - could be due to Good Messaging.
  • Good drains battery and introduces an annoying bug. Incoming calls don't show the user name, only the number is displayed.
  • Lack of dedicated music keys. The soft key is buggy. If you're listening to a song/podcast and try to fast forward/backward the mp3 will restart. I found in some forum that the bug is triggered if you change the volume while it's playing (which I happen to do all the time). I can't believe this stupid bug is yet to be fixed.
  • No GPS. I already mentioned this. Cell tower based location identification is pretty neat but doesn't match GPS.
  • Lack of apps. I would dearly love scrabble and some decent apps on the phone. The only one I like currently is Google Maps.
All of which makes me interested in the Samsung Galaxy Spica i5700 which has recently got a Android 2.1 upgrade. Phone is available for about 12.5K which somehow seems to be my sweet spot for buying mobile phones :-).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How useful is Google Maps currently in India? I am aware that cities are covered well, but I just wanted your opinion as to whether you have interesting use cases in, say, Bangalore, or if you would use it more for travel.

Ganesan Rajagopal said...

I am very impressed by Google Maps. Even on my E63 which does not have GPS, Google maps keeps my location updated as I move around in Bangalore. Routing is pretty good and can neatly route from "My Location" to another location or between any two locations. UI is pretty usable.